Genres
Description
Fiction. Literature. HTML: With a warm yet political humor, Ukraine's most famous novelist presents a balanced and illuminating portrait of modern conflict. Little Starhorodivka, a village of three streets, lies in Ukraine's Grey Zone, the no-man's-land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to the lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda that has been dragging on for years, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, a rival from his schooldays. With little food and no electricity, under constant threat of bombardment, Sergeyich's one remaining pleasure is his bees. As spring approaches, he knows he must take them far from the Grey Zone so they can collect their pollen in peace. This simple mission on their behalf introduces him to combatants and civilians on both sides of the battle lines: loyalists, separatists, Russian occupiers and Crimean Tatars. Wherever he goes, Sergeyich's childlike simplicity and strong moral compass disarm everyone he meets. But could these qualities be manipulated to serve an unworthy cause, spelling disaster for him, his bees and his country?.… (more)
Publication
Deep Vellum Publishing (2022), 360 pages
User reviews
LibraryThing member bereanna
Eastern Ukraine, the grey zone between the Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army, 2013, shortly before Russia took over Crimea. Sergeyich is one of two left in his village after the others fled the shelling. He is a beekeeper who cares for his bees more than anything. Spring is coming so he
Not much happened in the first half of the book, but the introspective Sergeyich provides a complete picture of the area and the conflicts, the war and the cultural issues. Sergeyich turns out to be a humanitarian. I want to read this again. The book club discussion was deep and fulfilling.
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heads south to give them flowers and trees to live from. At home the orchard was damaged and the noise from overhead and nearby shelling is not conducive to their health. Going thru checkpoints, he experiences differing degrees of interrogation. Then in one town he settles in a park for his bees until the townsfolk who suspect he’s on the Russian side (he’s not)cause home to fear for his bees. Then in Crimeanhe heads to an old acquaintances home, but the russians have removed him on some pretense and just his family is left behind. They help him set up and feed him, but the russians and the orthodox folks don’t like the Muslim tartars (the family he befriended). Russians have given him only 90 days and he heads home. Not much happened in the first half of the book, but the introspective Sergeyich provides a complete picture of the area and the conflicts, the war and the cultural issues. Sergeyich turns out to be a humanitarian. I want to read this again. The book club discussion was deep and fulfilling.
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LibraryThing member LynnB
This story is set in 2013, during the Russian invasion of Crimea. Sergey Sergeyich lives in an all-but-abandoned town in the Grey Zone between Russian and Ukrainian forces. The only other resident is his friend/enemy Pashka. There is no electricity, no shops and shells regularly pass overhead. This
In the second half, Sergey leaves his community so that his bees can make honey without dealing with shelling. In this half, there are more characters and we can see the effects of war on culture and compassion as Sergey crosses checkpoints, makes some friends and some enemies. We see how people from different sides of the war, and from different cultures, react to this man who lives "in between".
Reading this while the war in Ukraine continues makes it especially poignant for me.
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is an introspective story (especially in the first half) that show the effects of living in a war zone, with loss of community and a normal life.In the second half, Sergey leaves his community so that his bees can make honey without dealing with shelling. In this half, there are more characters and we can see the effects of war on culture and compassion as Sergey crosses checkpoints, makes some friends and some enemies. We see how people from different sides of the war, and from different cultures, react to this man who lives "in between".
Reading this while the war in Ukraine continues makes it especially poignant for me.
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LibraryThing member colligan
Lots of things to like about "Grey Bees". The author gently walks us through a situation and a people caught in the middle of a war. The plot pales in comparison to the richness and warmth of the characters. The main character, Sergey Sergeyich and, as importantly, his bees, wend their way amidst
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both real and emotional explosives. The novel provides the reader with a very real picture of living in East Ukraine's painful struggles while also reinforcing our commitment to a shared fundamental human dignity. Definitely a worthwhile and touching read. Show Less
LibraryThing member chirikosan
I have become Ukrainized. I would have never read this book had it not been for the terrible, horrible things that have been happening to the wonderful nation of Ukraine. As it stands, this book has opened my eyes towards new gems of literary accolades and I will continue to be in the lookouts for
Even if I had read this book beforehand, I would have not understood a lot of the unmentioned innuendo that is succinctly breadcrumbed into this book. For example, the scene where Sergeyich talks to Petro for the first time. If I had not been properly warned about Russian and Ukrainian variations of given names, I would have innocently assumed Sergeyich just didn't like his middle name. In reality, this initially inconsequantial scene is a huge window towards Sergeyich's true loyalty despite having grown up in a tiny village inside of the Donbas during Soviet times and who exclusively speaks in Russian during the whole course of the novel.
Yes, it is obvious Sergeyich has pretty straightforward reasons why he got divorced with Vitalina. At first sight, he disagreed with the cosmopolitan name she wanted for their daughter because he is a village guy. But I believe this is the other side to his personality which is multifaceted.
From an ignorant westerner's point of view, the Russian speaking Southeastern Ukrainians are traitors, do not love their country, feel persecuted etc etc etc. And this novel takes few punches because the Ukrainians tend to treat Sergeyich with a certain disdain because of his Donbas license plates instead of the quality of his character. They don't reach the point of mocking him for not speaking Ukrainian (the novel hints he is capable of understanding it when he watches tv or talks to people), but there is always a sense of unwritten tension like he is an outcast in his own country. Outsiders even Vinnytsia who hails from the super patriotic western enclaves of Ukraine seem to be at odds with Sergeyich without really sitting down and examining why he behaves in certain ways during the story.
At almost 50 years old, the MC was born in the late 1960's, in another era where Ukrainianism was met with certain death during the Soviet era. Traveling abroad was pretty much limited to Belarus and Russia and while Vitalina was also forced to perform obligatory soviet summer camps growing up, she was exposed to western society and didn't think twice to flee west when the Donbas war started. Sergeyich proves during many instances of the novel that while he thinks the government wastes too much time renaming streets, he remains allegiant to Ukraine despite feeling closer cultural ties with Russia due to his Soviet upbringing. In a way, he is the personification of a dying breed of simple minded people that are familiar cowering to their evil overlords because that is how you survived but he still retains a sense of humor and a love for Ukrainian literature. He doesn't hate Russia per se, just accepts the cruel things they do like it is. So it makes a whole deal of sense he would soon drift apart from his ex-wife and yet at the same time continue to clamor for her because she was so exotic, outspoken and defiant. Galya serves as his second love interest in the novel and while he could very well be very happy with her as she floods him with love and attention, everything about her just seems a bit plain. Common Russian name, similar soviet worldview, etc...
I like how the novel tries to explore his complicated cultural allegiance in the no-man's land between constant artillery strikes. What kind of person would willingly cling on to a tiny house with primitive coal ovens located in the middle of nowhere with no electricity and barely scraping by eating honey all day? In Sergeyich's case, it seems like a desperate final effort to cling onto nostalgia for his soviet childhood. The only other villager that remains, his frenemy Pashka is very open about his worldview: he wants the Donbas to be annexed to Russia, but he isn't interested in joining the army either. Pashka conveniently ignores the racist way Russians treat him like second-rate trash (even the ones he claims are his friends), whereas Sergeyich doesn't like the soldiers but sort of tolerates them once again due to his soviet occupation upbringing. To him, they are just a normal albeit inconvenient part of life. Some of them treat him with pity because the westernized Ukrainians tend to treat everyone from the Donbas like wannabe terrorists, but none of the Russians in the novel are particularly nice to him. They view him like a weirdo for not getting a Russian passport or having a Tatar muslim friend, and serve zero punches telling him he can't relocate permanently in Russia. For a country with such a dire gender imbalance and decreasing population, Russia does quite the job doing everything in their power to be as unwelcoming to refugees as possible. Even people like Sergeyich with useful job skills that are direly needed.
I would have wanted the book to spend less time delving into Sergeyich's meandering dreams that don't really bring anything to the story (or obsessing over Viktor Yanukovich's shoes). Perhaps the dratted shoes are being used as a metaphor about the MC's sheltered life and his struggles getting used to seeing nice things westernized people take for granted. I would have wanted more time to talk about actual honeymaking and beeswax. What is the difference between them? What can you do with them? Exactly how does an extractor work?
Can't spoil the ending but I enjoyed it a lot. If the book had focused less on meandering and more on apiculture, this book would have been a solid 5 star read. Format of the mobi book also had serious issues. It doesn't stick to the last read page which makes it difficult to navigate.
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more translated books from Ukrainian authors. I really hope editorials also try to translate books from authors whose lives were cruelly taken away from Stalinism and other further soviet purges.Even if I had read this book beforehand, I would have not understood a lot of the unmentioned innuendo that is succinctly breadcrumbed into this book. For example, the scene where Sergeyich talks to Petro for the first time. If I had not been properly warned about Russian and Ukrainian variations of given names, I would have innocently assumed Sergeyich just didn't like his middle name. In reality, this initially inconsequantial scene is a huge window towards Sergeyich's true loyalty despite having grown up in a tiny village inside of the Donbas during Soviet times and who exclusively speaks in Russian during the whole course of the novel.
Yes, it is obvious Sergeyich has pretty straightforward reasons why he got divorced with Vitalina. At first sight, he disagreed with the cosmopolitan name she wanted for their daughter because he is a village guy. But I believe this is the other side to his personality which is multifaceted.
From an ignorant westerner's point of view, the Russian speaking Southeastern Ukrainians are traitors, do not love their country, feel persecuted etc etc etc. And this novel takes few punches because the Ukrainians tend to treat Sergeyich with a certain disdain because of his Donbas license plates instead of the quality of his character. They don't reach the point of mocking him for not speaking Ukrainian (the novel hints he is capable of understanding it when he watches tv or talks to people), but there is always a sense of unwritten tension like he is an outcast in his own country. Outsiders even Vinnytsia who hails from the super patriotic western enclaves of Ukraine seem to be at odds with Sergeyich without really sitting down and examining why he behaves in certain ways during the story.
At almost 50 years old, the MC was born in the late 1960's, in another era where Ukrainianism was met with certain death during the Soviet era. Traveling abroad was pretty much limited to Belarus and Russia and while Vitalina was also forced to perform obligatory soviet summer camps growing up, she was exposed to western society and didn't think twice to flee west when the Donbas war started. Sergeyich proves during many instances of the novel that while he thinks the government wastes too much time renaming streets, he remains allegiant to Ukraine despite feeling closer cultural ties with Russia due to his Soviet upbringing. In a way, he is the personification of a dying breed of simple minded people that are familiar cowering to their evil overlords because that is how you survived but he still retains a sense of humor and a love for Ukrainian literature. He doesn't hate Russia per se, just accepts the cruel things they do like it is. So it makes a whole deal of sense he would soon drift apart from his ex-wife and yet at the same time continue to clamor for her because she was so exotic, outspoken and defiant. Galya serves as his second love interest in the novel and while he could very well be very happy with her as she floods him with love and attention, everything about her just seems a bit plain. Common Russian name, similar soviet worldview, etc...
I like how the novel tries to explore his complicated cultural allegiance in the no-man's land between constant artillery strikes. What kind of person would willingly cling on to a tiny house with primitive coal ovens located in the middle of nowhere with no electricity and barely scraping by eating honey all day? In Sergeyich's case, it seems like a desperate final effort to cling onto nostalgia for his soviet childhood. The only other villager that remains, his frenemy Pashka is very open about his worldview: he wants the Donbas to be annexed to Russia, but he isn't interested in joining the army either. Pashka conveniently ignores the racist way Russians treat him like second-rate trash (even the ones he claims are his friends), whereas Sergeyich doesn't like the soldiers but sort of tolerates them once again due to his soviet occupation upbringing. To him, they are just a normal albeit inconvenient part of life. Some of them treat him with pity because the westernized Ukrainians tend to treat everyone from the Donbas like wannabe terrorists, but none of the Russians in the novel are particularly nice to him. They view him like a weirdo for not getting a Russian passport or having a Tatar muslim friend, and serve zero punches telling him he can't relocate permanently in Russia. For a country with such a dire gender imbalance and decreasing population, Russia does quite the job doing everything in their power to be as unwelcoming to refugees as possible. Even people like Sergeyich with useful job skills that are direly needed.
I would have wanted the book to spend less time delving into Sergeyich's meandering dreams that don't really bring anything to the story (or obsessing over Viktor Yanukovich's shoes). Perhaps the dratted shoes are being used as a metaphor about the MC's sheltered life and his struggles getting used to seeing nice things westernized people take for granted. I would have wanted more time to talk about actual honeymaking and beeswax. What is the difference between them? What can you do with them? Exactly how does an extractor work?
Can't spoil the ending but I enjoyed it a lot. If the book had focused less on meandering and more on apiculture, this book would have been a solid 5 star read. Format of the mobi book also had serious issues. It doesn't stick to the last read page which makes it difficult to navigate.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Dreesie
Ukraine. Donetsk. The gray zone.
Sergei is middle-aged, divorced, a beekeeper--and one of two men who stayed behind in their abandoned gray-zone village in Donetsk. Hemmed in my Ukrainian forces on one side and Russians/separatists on the other, the subsist with no electricity and limited
Come spring, Sergei leaves with his bees, looking for a bee-friendly place to stop. He finds his way to Crimea, to visit a beekeeping acquaintance he met at a conference years earlier.
Sergei is surprisingly naive and kind for a man living in a war zone. He cares only about his bees and their honey--not about religion, or nationality, or ethnicity, or language. He is continually surprised and unprepared for the hostility he meets--toward himself, and toward others. His naivete, old car, sloppy paperwork, and bees get him through safely. As a nearly homeless beekeeper, he also has plenty of time to consider his past actions, ex-wife, daughter, hometown, friendships, and more.
Sergei is middle-aged, divorced, a beekeeper--and one of two men who stayed behind in their abandoned gray-zone village in Donetsk. Hemmed in my Ukrainian forces on one side and Russians/separatists on the other, the subsist with no electricity and limited
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foodstuffs, hoping the next bomb does not land on them.Come spring, Sergei leaves with his bees, looking for a bee-friendly place to stop. He finds his way to Crimea, to visit a beekeeping acquaintance he met at a conference years earlier.
Sergei is surprisingly naive and kind for a man living in a war zone. He cares only about his bees and their honey--not about religion, or nationality, or ethnicity, or language. He is continually surprised and unprepared for the hostility he meets--toward himself, and toward others. His naivete, old car, sloppy paperwork, and bees get him through safely. As a nearly homeless beekeeper, he also has plenty of time to consider his past actions, ex-wife, daughter, hometown, friendships, and more.
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LibraryThing member Iira
Sergei has a special interest in bees, and that's what he's all about. Sympathetic, but had higher expectations.
Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2022)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — 2022)
Prix des libraires du Québec (2023)
Prix Médicis (2022)
EBRD Literature Prize (Longlist — 2021)
Globe and Mail Top 100 Book (2022)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults (Selection — 2022)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2018 (1e édition originale en ukrainien et russe, In-folio, Kharkiv
2022-02-03 (1e traduction et édition française, Liana Levi)
2023-08-24 (Réédition française, Piccolo, Liana Levi)
Physical description
360 p.; 8.5 inches
ISBN
1646051661 / 9781646051663